‘If not for you, Black Tom, we’d be swinging from a gibbet,’ Penn said, eyebrows arched. ‘You’re a useful man to know.’
‘But you don’t know me, Matthew,’ Tom countered.
‘That’s true enough, I suppose,’ Penn admitted, ‘but I always knew there was some story to you, though I didn’t have a crown on you being the son of a knight. Wish I had. If today goes badly for us you can persuade His Majesty to grant me, Nayler and Weasel a royal pardon.’ He grinned. ‘Fuck Trencher. That tosspot wouldn’t accept one if it was offered on a silver dish.’
‘I think I’ve burned that bridge, Matt, don’t you?’ Tom said, feeling something like a smile twitch on his own lips.
‘Aye,’ Trencher put in, ‘you’ve done to your inheritance what Weasel’s done to some poor farmer’s field.’ He nodded at Weasel who was pulling up his breeches.
‘Fathers can be forgiving, Trencher,’ Penn said. ‘Mine’s dragged me out of more whores’ beds than I can remember—’
‘And jumped into them soon as your back was turned,’ Trencher finished for him.
Penn pursed his lips, suggesting that this stone might not have landed too far from the bucket, then swept a hand out before him. ‘Well, Essex has set us up defensively here,’ he said, as though the chosen battlefield were a chess board, ‘which makes me think he can’t be too confident that we’ll win.’
‘I heard we’re still waiting for half the bloody army to catch up,’ Weasel offered, mounting again gingerly, a grimace slitting his pinched face.
‘That’s not why we’re lined up here like skittles at the arse end of the alley,’ Trencher said, ‘it’s because the earl does not want to be held responsible for attacking the King of England. Otherwise we’d have torn into the swaggering bastards when they were tumbling down that hill like a flock of drunk bloody sheep this morning.’
Some of the men agreed with that and Tom thought there was probably some truth in it. From what Tom understood of Essex’s strategy, Parliament’s twelve infantry regiments were grouped into three brigades of between three and four thousand men, making up the van, the middle, and the rear. Rather than forming a mass of pikemen twenty deep and flanked by musketeers that could roll across the field sweeping an enemy aside, each regiment would be able to act independently, lending help where it was needed. As for the cavalry, almost all of it was drawn up under Sir James Ramsey’s command to the north, on their left, twenty-four troops according to Captain Clement, for that was where the Royalist devils had concentrated the weight of their own cavalry. Clement had been given command of a new troop of harquebusiers cobbled together from one which had been mauled at Powick Bridge and the men of Tom’s own troop who had escaped the ambush at Wormleighton village, so that Tom now found himself in Balfour’s Horse. A dour Puritan with a long face and a livid birthmark smeared across his cheek that gave him cause to be angry with the world, Clement was not popular with his men as Captain Preston had been, but he was a professional soldier who had served in the Dutch army. He had the men’s respect, which, along with their obedience, was all he asked of them.
‘Look around yourselves, men!’ Captain Clement had called as they were walking their mounts to the field on the right wing of Essex’s army. ‘We on the right are three regiments only. And three will be enough so long as you discharge your duty to God and to Parliament.’
Tom and the others had glanced around perturbed, for sixteen troops of horse did not seem enough, not when facing Royalist cavalry.
‘Least we’ve got that lot,’ Trencher had muttered, thumbing at several troops of dragoons that had come to support them on the right. The thought of those men with their firelocks pouring bullets into the enemy from the flanks was a comforting one.
But Weasel was not impressed. ‘They’ll scarper soon enough when the King’s hounds are loosed,’ he had said with a sneer. ‘Bastards won’t stand against cavalry, not without pikemen holding their hands, or an advantage of terrain.’
Clement, though, was optimistic. ‘And I have been informed that that devil the King’s nephew is on the other side of the field,’ the captain had added, pointing over to the Royalist right. ‘So we won’t have the pleasure of humbling him today.’
‘Thank Christ,’ Penn had muttered at that, and Tom had felt a shudder of relief for that meant the chances were that he would not face his father, Mun and Emmanuel when the butchery began.
Now it was afternoon and perhaps a half hour had passed since someone had announced it was two o’clock. Men were still pissing away their nerves, checking their gear, babbling about women and drink and their favourite inns. They talked of the weather and of what they would eat if they could have any meal brought to them there and then – anything to steer their thoughts from what was coming.
And then the big guns began to sing.
Crows and rooks that had been scavenging the ploughed soil took to the sky, crying angrily. Horses neighed and whinnied and snorted and some kicked or pawed the ground. Achilles’s ears were mobile, his neck carriage high and his eyes bright and alert.
‘It’s all right, boy,’ Tom soothed him, rubbing his poll and patting his thick, muscular neck. ‘It’s just the guns, boy. Nothing to worry us.’ The cannon thumped the air like a drum skin, ragged salvos of thunderous noise accompanied by clouds of dirty white smoke that hung above the regiments, obscuring the great banners.
‘This is it, boys!’ an infantry sergeant yelled, raising his halberd into the grey day. ‘This is what we came for!’
Tom had never heard noise like it, would not have imagined thunder could sound so loud if you were riding forked lightning. Each new iron-spitting fusillade pounded his head and thumped his guts and he could feel Achilles flinching beneath him so he steadied his own breathing because the stallion would take comfort from it. ‘Easy, Achilles. It will soon be time to run.’
But the guns roared for an hour and the armies faced each other, some regiments wheeling this way or that but most standing still as boulders, and some died on both sides, torn apart by cannon shot, but not many.
And then, after what seemed an age, the squall of the big guns began to ebb and Tom began to shake and some men began to puke again.
‘Now,’ he whispered. Now came the real killing.
The enemy had drawn up in two lines in a chequerboard formation which would enable the brigades in the second line to plug the gaps in the first if necessary. But now, with the fury of the big guns spent, the King’s army began to march and it was a sight that raised the hairs on Tom’s neck and arms as he sat Achilles in the front line. Musketeers and pikemen came on, a great brawl of colour spreading across the ploughed field to the beat of their drums. The two lines merged into one rolling wave that sought to wash away Parliament’s challenge before it was properly begun.
A man in buff-coat, back- and breastplate, with a blue feathered plume jutting from his helmet and a matching blue sash round his waist, rode out in front of the regiment and turned his horse to face his men. It was their commander himself, Sir William Balfour. Men said Sir William was a great soldier, that he had distinguished himself fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands. Looking at the Scot now Tom had no reason to doubt it.
‘We are not needed here!’ Balfour yelled, his short, pointed beard jutting belligerently from his chin. ‘This will be a scrap between their dragoons and ours. Lord Fielding will hold this flank, should their cavalry grow bold.’ He kept his sentences short and clear, hand loose with the reins, letting his mount turn this way and that. ‘So we shall find employment elsewhere on the field.’ With that he wheeled off to the right and Captain Clement yelled at his troop to follow Sir William wherever he might lead.
‘Heya!’ Tom called, hauling on his reins and riding after them. He glanced up to see two rooks beating their black wings, heard their hoarse craa above the thump of countless hooves, and in that moment he was reminded of his childhood, when he and Mun had thrown stones at a pair that were eating the eyes of a
drowned woman. They had watched a farmer pull her out of the Tawd, her hand still clasping the herbs she had been gathering, and the farmer had told the boys to stay with her whilst he rode to tell her kin. But then the rooks had come and Mun had said they must defend her even though she was dead.
‘Keep it tight! Stay together!’ Captain Clement yelled, as they threaded between Essex’s brigades, Tom noting the pale, fear-filled faces of a hedge of young pikemen awaiting commands. Then they came to a tract of foot-churned ground between the van and the central brigade and here they stopped, Sir William roaring commands at his officers. The rest, men and horses, waiting. As four regiments of enemy infantry marched towards them.
‘We’re to be used in the hottest part of the fire,’ Penn said, counting the carbine balls in the leather bag tied to his saddle. Tom had seen him do it three times already but knew that it was instinct that made a man busy his hands before a fight.
‘I would be in no other part,’ Tom said through his teeth, taking in the gut-churning sight before him.
‘I’d wager that’s what the last man said who wore that buff-coat,’ Penn muttered with more grimace than grin, and Tom glanced down at the ominous dark stain which bloomed from the coat’s collar to halfway down the lacings. Seeing that Tom owned no other armour, dour Captain Clement had given him the coat, claiming the former grocer’s widow would take little comfort from the bloody thing were they to give it to her, and so long as Tom didn’t mind a bit of hard scrubbing the tough leather coat was his. But Tom knew a stain like that would never get out and so had not even tried. As for the poor quality pot on his head, Sir William himself had provided that, saying that his men would be no good to him or God with the porridge of their brains leaking from their skulls. Bloodstained leather and thin steel. But it would keep him alive until he had done what he must.
He felt the reassuring discomfort of his father’s pistols in his boots, their long barrels pressing against his lower legs. He had lost his sword at Wormleighton village but he had a wicked-looking poll-axe now instead, its haft thrust into a crude holster against his saddle. I have all I need, gnarred a voice in his head.
Sir William Balfour’s Horse formed up again, Tom’s troop drawn up seven across and nine deep – sixty-three men ready to unleash shot and sword upon the enemy. Tom sat Achilles three from the right in the first line, a faint trembling announcing itself in his limbs as the infantry brigade to their left began to move forward to the drum’s beat. Muskets were crackling now on both flanks of the field and smoke was drifting across from east to west, so Tom knew that without the talk of the drums both armies would be deaf and blind.
Officers bellowed commands, trumpeters passed on orders, men yelled to give themselves and each other courage, and horses screamed. Drums beat, muskets cracked, tack jangled, buckles rattled against armour and the big guns roared sporadically. The air was clogged with the stink of smoke, of men and horses and dirty clothes, and what could be seen of the October sky was now endless grey and threatened rain as Sir William rode once more along his line and Royalist musketeers took potshots at him though he took no notice.
‘We’re going to blood the enemy, boys!’ he called, hoisting his carbine above his head, his blue helmet plume dancing. ‘Are you with me?’ Some yelled that they were, but not enough to satisfy Balfour. ‘I said, are you with me?’ This time a great wave of noise crashed over him and he grinned savagely. ‘Give them steel and Hell!’ the Scotsman roared.
‘God be with you, Tom,’ Penn called through the clamour.
‘Just kill the bastards, Matt!’ Tom shouted back. Then Sir William wheeled his grey stallion round, his words lost in the tumult, and gave the beast his spurs. And Tom dug his own heels into Achilles’s flank and charged.
Hooves flung up clods of mud and manes and tails flew and men shrieked. Achilles tore up the ground and Tom loved him as he pulled his righthand pistol from his boot. The enemy, which ten breaths ago had been only a sea of indistinct faces, now became individuals whose features were twisted with terror and hatred.
‘Go on, boy!’ Tom yelled, a musket ball plucking at the shoulder of his buff-coat on its way past. He squeezed the trigger and the firelock roared and a Royalist musketeer fell back in a spray of blood. Then Tom hauled the poll-axe from its sheath as he ploughed into the green-coated ranks alongside Sir William who was screaming and part of Tom was aware that he was screaming too. The musketeers were thrown back into the men behind and the press was such that they could not even raise their arms as Tom’s poll-axe swung down, chopping into a man’s shoulder so that he shrieked like a vixen. Tom ripped the blade from the meat as Achilles plunged deeper into the crush. A musket flared and Tom felt the ferocious heat of it against his face as he leant out and brought the poll-axe down, hacking off the hand that thrust the musket up in defence. On his right, Penn was slashing wildly, his sword flinging out gloops of blood, and on his left Weasel was fighting like a devil, wielding his hanger about him in a desperate, animal fury.
‘Kill the pigfuckers!’ Weasel was screaming.
‘With me!’ Balfour roared, and Tom yelled at Achilles to push on, and into the press they drove, a wedge of perhaps fifty, hacking and slashing, carving into the Greencoats who were terror-stricken and trying to fly but could not for the weight of men behind them. A sergeant jabbed his halberd at Tom’s face and Tom snapped his head back, but then the sergeant yanked the halberd back and its axe head caught the right bar of Tom’s pot’s face guard and he felt his head being wrenched off, the rusty axe blade half a finger’s length from his right eye. He was being hauled from the saddle so he pulled his left foot from its stirrup and snatched the other pistol from his boot, bringing it across himself, then fired blind and the snagged axe blade jerked so he threw up his arm and knocked it away, pushing into his right stirrup to seat himself back in the saddle.
He pressed himself down against Achilles’s neck, pushing the pistol back into his boot and glancing around to see that there was suddenly space around him, for the Greencoats had broken. They were running, though their one-eyed commander was screaming at them to stand, hauling men back by the scruffs of their necks, and Tom recognized him as Colonel Lunsford, the man he had seen slashing apprentices at Westminster.
‘With me, boys!’ Balfour cried, wheeling right, desperate to use their momentum and spread the terror their charge had planted in the Greencoats’ bellies amongst other men. Bluecoats these, and as fine-looking a regiment as Tom had ever seen. Achilles surged amongst them and Tom swung the poll-axe underarm, cleaving a man’s head in an explosion of gore that spattered those fine blue coats with crimson.
A hanger struck Tom’s back but his buff-coat stopped the blade, then Achilles screamed but Tom did not see who or what had hurt him. All around him Balfour’s troopers were sowing death and terror, their blades plunging into the mass, carbines roaring, but then Captain Clement was yelling for them to withdraw. A musket butt jabbed up at Tom and he beat it aside with the poll-axe and Achilles slammed his head down onto the musketeer and he dropped.
‘Withdraw! Withdraw!’ Clement was yelling and then Tom saw why. A blue-coated pike-division was coming for them, six ranks of men each hefting sixteen feet of ash tipped with a steel blade. For a moment Tom held his ground and Achilles stamped the churned earth furiously.
‘We’ve done our work! Time to go,’ an experienced trooper called Horton shouted, fighting to control his own mount, when his head burst in a spray of blood, skull and brain. Tom stared at Horton. One of the man’s legs was shaking violently, the foot still in the stirrup, but surely he had to be dead, for half his face and head was gone.
‘Withdraw, Rivers!’ Clement yelled, bringing his horse alongside. ‘Get back, damn you!’ he roared, spittle flying. ‘That’s an order!’ But for Tom everything had slowed and he felt as though he were mired in a deep dream; one of those he sometimes had which he could control. Or thought he could.
Troopers were riding back past him in their
panic to escape those wicked pikes and one of them cut across another, so that the second man’s horse pulled up and then the horse screamed and the trooper’s face contorted, eyes bulging, nostrils flaring as a pike blade erupted from his shoulder and another ripped open his neck.
Tom glanced round. Clement was gone. But Trencher was there, screaming at him. All Tom could hear was a roar like that of the sea hurling itself against rocks, and musket balls cracking the air around him or thunking into armour. Or slapping into flesh.
Then some part of him reacted. He wrenched on the reins and Achilles shrieked and turned and dug in and tore away with the others. As the blue-coated pikemen came on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘THE KING AND the cause!’ prince rupert yelled, raising his sword to the grey heavens.
‘The King and the cause!’ men roared. They had begun at a walk, then a rising trot, harnesses and gear jangling, leather creaking. But now the Prince dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks and it lurched forward, headlong towards the enemy waiting in battalia at the crest of a small hill. The rebels had placed musketeers in the hedges and enclosures on the flank to rake the Royalist right, but the Prince’s dragoons had chased them off.
‘Heya, boy!’ Mun yelled, raking his heels back and snapping the reins as all around him the Royalist right wing broke into a full-blooded charge.
A stuttering volley of pistol and carbine fire spat at them and Mun felt the thrum of lead ripping through the air but nothing hit him and he raced on, Hector matching the Prince’s mare for speed, his hooves adding to the rolling thunder, flinging mud.
And the enemy were breaking! Some of the orange-scarved riders were hauling their mounts round and giving them their spurs. Others, appalled by the failure of their volley to slow the Prince’s charge, wheeled left and right in panic, yelling at their fellows to stand.
The Bleeding Land Page 28